Enter the Dragon: Khillwar’s Foray into the Mobile Gaming Market of China

Khillwar is a mobile game developer from India faced growing competition. Its leadership position in India prompted it to scout out opportunities for growth outside the country. As a strategic move, the management team of Khillwar planned to expand into emerging markets and selected China as the new business battlefield. China seemed to be the promising land of opportunities for mobile game developers and operators. However, the Chinese market posed a number of significant challenges for foreign companies, making it risky to step into this market. This case discusses the opportunities and the key challenges associated with the decision to expand in China for an Indian mobile gaming software company such as Khillwar. The teaching case is focused on discussion of various issues that an IT company needs to consider when contemplating growth outside its country of origin. The students need to consider the pros and cons of expanding into the China market and make recommendations to the management of the Khillwar team on how to make the expansion smooth and successful. This case explains the challenges of expansion to a new IT market and, specifically, to a new emerging IT market for a successful IT company

Understanding Different Cognitive Levels of Social Engagement: Evidence from Paid Q&A

Despite the widespread conversion of free content to paid content, empirical research investigating social engagement in the paid context still lags. Moreover, prior research used like and comment to measure social engagement without considering their differences. In this study, we conceptualize like and comment on two distinct behavioral manifestations differing cognitive processes involved: low- and high-cognitive social engagement. Specifically, setting in a paid Q&A site, we identify the answer provider characteristic (i.e., the number of followers and posts) and answer characteristic (i.e., viewership revenue) as salient factors influencing social engagement. We compare their direct and interaction effects on the two types of social engagement. Results show that identified factors have a greater direct effect and smaller interaction effect on low-cognitive social engagement than on highcognitive social engagement. Our work advances knowledge of social engagement and has practical implications for platform practitioners to achieve social engagement

Mitigating IT Professionals’ Turnover in Non-IT Organizations: An Organizational Identification Perspective

The turnover of IT professionals is a perpetual challenge for non-IT organizations. Based on self-categorization theory, this study proposes that IT employees’ turnover may be mitigated by fostering their identification with non-IT organizations, which can be done by meeting various facilitative conditions. Guided by intergroup contact theory, we identify IT employees’ perceived alignment between IT and the core business of an organization (business-IT alignment), the extent of boundary-spanning activities that IT employees engage in, and the closeness of the relationships between IT and non-IT employees as the drivers of their organizational identification. Using survey data collected from organizations in different industries, we obtained empirical evidence supporting the positive effects of the perceived business-IT alignment, the extent of boundary-spanning activities, and the relationship closeness between IT and non-IT employees on IT employees’ organizational identification. Additionally, there was a three-way interaction effect among the three drivers such that the relationship closeness between IT and non-IT employees reduced the positive effect of the extent of boundary-spanning activities on IT employees’ organizational identification when business-IT alignment was low. However, this negative moderating effect diminished when business-IT alignment increased. The findings of this research advance the literature and offer practical guidelines for non-IT organizations on how to enhance their IT employees’ organizational identification and how to mitigate their turnover intentions

How Does Social Media Improve Work Efficiency? Insights from the Theory of Communication Visibility

Social media tools have been increasingly used by employees for internal communication, knowledge sharing, and problem-solving. Despite many studies on knowledge sharing in online settings, little has examined what affects employees’ use of social media for work-related knowledge sharing and work efficiency. Drawing on theories of communication visibility and work motivation, this study examines the direct and indirect influence of message transparency and network translucence together with work motivations (i.e., reputation and social networking) on employees’ knowledge sharing. We further hypothesize the impacts of message transparency and network translucence on work efficiency. Based on a survey of 259 employees, we find that message transparency positively influences knowledge sharing and work efficiency. Notably, message transparency weakens the impact of reputation on knowledge sharing while network translucence strengthens the effect of social networking on knowledge sharing. The practical and theoretical implications of our findings are discussed

Generic protease detection technology for monitoring periodontal disease

Periodontal diseases are inflammatory conditions that affect the supporting tissues of teeth and can lead to destruction of the bone support and ultimately tooth loss if untreated. Progression of periodontitis is usually site specific but not uniform, and currently there are no accurate clinical methods for distinguishing sites where there is active disease progression from sites that are quiescent. Consequently, unnecessary and costly treatment of periodontal sites that are not progressing may occur. Three proteases have been identified as suitable markers for distinguishing sites with active disease progression and quiescent sites: human neutrophil elastase, cathepsin G and MMP8. Generic sensor materials for the detection of these three proteases have been developed based on thin dextran hydrogel films cross-linked with peptides. Degradation of the hydrogel films was monitored using impedance measurements. The target proteases were detected in the clinically relevant range within a time frame of 3 min. Good specificity for different proteases was achieved by choosing appropriate peptide cross-linkers.<br/

Neighborhood VAR: Efficient estimation of multivariate timeseries with neighborhood information

In data science, vector autoregression (VAR) models are popular in modeling multivariate time series in the environmental sciences and other applications. However, these models are computationally complex with the number of parameters scaling quadratically with the number of time series. In this work, we propose a so-called neighborhood vector autoregression (NVAR) model to efficiently analyze large-dimensional multivariate time series. We assume that the time series have underlying neighborhood relationships, e.g., spatial or network, among them based on the inherent setting of the problem. When this neighborhood information is available or can be summarized using a distance matrix, we demonstrate that our proposed NVAR method provides a computationally efficient and theoretically sound estimation of model parameters. The performance of the proposed method is compared with other existing approaches in both simulation studies and a real application of stream nitrogen study

IT Employees’ Organizational Identification: Examining its Antecedents and Impact on Turnover

Non-IT organizations increasingly rely on IT to achieve both operational excellence and strategic competitiveness. IT employees play pivotal roles in helping non-IT organizations realize the potential of IT. Yet, the turnover culture within the IT profession has posed challenges to organizations. How to effectively manage and retain IT human capital has become a critical issue. The current study examines turnover issue among IT employees in non-IT organizations from an organizational identification perspective. We propose that IT employees’ organizational identification could weaken their turnover behavior. Further and more importantly, the study explores organization-, job-, and relation-related antecedents to IT employees’ organizational identification. A survey with 126 IT employees provides significant empirical support. IT employees’ organizational identification has a significant negative effect on turnover intention. Business-IT alignment, boundary spanning activities, and the closeness of the relationships with non-IT employees can significantly improve IT employees’ organizational identification

Expression of TRPM8 in the distal cerebrospinal fluid-contacting neurons in the brain mesencephalon of rats

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It has been shown that distal cerebrospinal fluid-contacting neurons (dCSF-CNs) exist near the ventral midline of the midbrain aqueduct and also in the grey matter of the inferior third ventricle and the fourth ventricle floor in the superior segment of the pons. The dCSF-CNs communicate between the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the brain parenchyma and may participate in the transduction and regulation of pain signals. The cold sensation receptor channel, TRPM8 is involved in analgesia for neuropathic pain, but whether the TRPM8 receptor exists on dCSF-CNs remains unknown. However, there is preliminary evidence that TRPM8 is expressed in dCSF-CNs and may participate in the transmission and regulation of sensory information between brain parenchyma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in rats.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Retrograde tracing of the cholera toxin subunit B labeled with horseradish peroxidase (CB-HRP) injected into the lateral ventricle was used to identify dCSF-CNs. A double-labeled immunofluorescent technique and laser scanning confocal microscopy were used to identify the expression of TRPM8 in dCSF-CNs. Software Image-Pro Plus was used to count the number of neurons in three sections where CB-HRP positive neurons were located in the mesencephalon of six rats.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The cell bodies of CB-HRP-positive dCSF-CNs were found in the brain parenchyma near the midline of the ventral Aq, also in the grey of the 3V, and the 4V floor in the superior segment of the pons. In the mesencephalon their processes extended into the CSF. TRPM8 labeled neurons were also found in the same area as were CB-HRP/TRPM8 double-labeled neurons. CB-HRP/TRPM8 double-labeled neurons were found in 42.9 ± 2.3% of neurons labeled by TRPM8, and all CB-HRP-labeled neurons were also labeled with TPRM8.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study has demonstrated that the cold sensation receptor channel, TRPM8, is localised within the dCSF-CNs of the mesencephalon. TRPM8 acts as receptor of dCSF-CNs for sensation transmission and pain regulation.</p